A few days before NewsGator released their plug-in for the new version of Yahoo! Messenger, I was at NewsGator for a board meeting and sat in on their Friday demo hour (one hour of rapid fire demos from stuff people are working on or things that got built “under the radar” during the previous week.) I saw some neat stuff, especially around a major release / announcement that I believe is coming in the next two weeks. I also saw a bunch of cool “small things” like new UI stuff being rolled into the products or long term features (such as filter by category) that are functional and just waiting for the right release cycle for each of the products.

While getting my ass kicked by Greg and Karyn German at foosball afterwards (I beat them once, but I had the secret Brian Kellner weapon on my team – once it was me and Seth, we got crushed), I reminisced with Greg about the very first time we met. I asked him if he “still had that presentation that didn’t have any numbers on it.” He did and sent it to me later that night.

I smiled when I saw this. I don’t remember exactly what I said to Greg when he showed me this slide, but it was something like “er – Greg – what are the numbers on the Y axis?” After a few moments of him sizing me up, he told me. His long term product vision came earlier in the deck, but it was remarkably prescient.

It’s obviously evolved in the two years since I’ve invested in NewsGator, but when I look back, it’s clear that the trajectory we are on is very consistent with the vision Greg showed me in 2004. His cover slide to the presentation says it all.